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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

Originally posted by Thymox OK, so we're going to get into quoting wars, are we?In your opinion, Linux is failing as a workstation OS. Yours is not the only one, I might remind you! And as for the rest of your post:
- 17 posts, yeah! You may have posted elsewhere, but from what you are saying, you have obviously not listened/read a single word of the advice given! You have obviously not done any research off your own back! You are obviously quite lazy!
- IDE burner! I have one and guess what! It worked straight away! I didn't need to do any tweaking, or fiddling, or anything of that ilk, I just installed the OS, lo and behold the thing works! I happen to know exactly why it works too, but that's beside the point - I don't need to know. Even if it didn't work straight away, I can almost guarantee that it'd only take around 3 or 4 commands to get it to work!
- Galeon comes as a part of most distros these days! Unless you're insisting on running something out of the ark, you're gonna have it! It takes at most 4 commands to install it, it works absolutely fine with PHP... God knows, most servers run LAMP systems, or something similar... let's analyse it, shall we? Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. I think it can cope! And as for you bank! The only reason that you can't use it is because you haven't got it right! You can learn!
- I'll say 1 word for you: KERNEL! Sure, most companies don't write drivers for their own hardware because most people won't be using Linux, but that's no reason to slate the OS. There are thousands, if not millions of people involved in getting the 'drivers' right for each piece of kit! Just as an example - please show me some obscure hardware, like an Atari machine, that can run Win2k? The OS itself is more than capable, it's the user that isn't!
- Bragging point! You really just don't get it, do you! May I suggest that you go away into some dark corner and just leave computers alone completely? If you think that running a piece of software is something to brag about, you are seriously disturbed!

-RESEARCH- "off my own back" uh... yeah I don't even know what this means & If I were lazy, I don't think I would have bothered.
-IDE- Thats really great for you and yours however, judging from the number of posts in this forum alone on the subject, your experience is the exception and not the rule.

-"The only reason that you can't use it is because you haven't got it right! You can learn!" So I need to learn to configure my browser to view flash and forms and whatever? Why? I just want to put an online order in. I don't want to have to download and compile some damn thing everytime I want to cruise the net! I just want it to WORK!
-ATARI- This is a pretty silly and confusing argument. Is the RIO 500 I use the 30 year old game console? Or is my computer the 30 year old game console? what was the point here?
Regardless I think both are fairly new and still utilizing the same basic software conventions as the newer stuff.

Research off your own back... reading!
IDE burner. What burner is it? All IDE burners should conform to the same standards, and that is using a subset of the SCSI commands, in which case you'd need to use IDE-SCSI emulation. Unless you have a really obscure drive, which I very much douby, it'll work fine without hassle. Certainly Mandy does the confusing bit for you.
Flash - it involved downloading one file and copying it over to another directory. That's hard?
Atari - my point being that the Linux community work very hard to get stuff to work on odd hardware, and the Rio is no exception. My point was made in the rest of that particular sentence - the OS is more than capable... And further to my earlier point - if the manufacturer of a device were to either write drivers themselve, which isn't really too tasking if they're having to write Windows drivers anyway, then you wouldn't have this problem. If the manufacturer was to release even a small amount of information about their device, it would make the Linux developer's task much easier. As it is, however, most hardware manufacturers are quite happy to disregard their potential Linux customers, and in my view, they should therefore loose trade for it. And don't get me started on WinModem manufacturers!

Well I had some responses to both sides, but I can't remember exactly what, so here is my summary of my postions:

Linux - Great for EVERYTHING except Gaming, and whose to blame for that, the Gaming community as a whole; and also has a short coming on P2P, but again, this is not a short coming of the OS, but rather the P2P communities involvement in winbloze...

Winbloze - Great for Gaming, which is not MS's fault, so the glory should not be there's the gloat in; P2P, well this is because every sheep out there who buys a computer and uses the default "crap" on there uses a winbloze P2P client, adding to this vicious cycle.

There are some specific reasons that winbloze is better, but it is not due to the capabilities of the OS, but rather the lack of knowledge of users. If someone wants to join up with that thought, or that way of thinking, there is nothing wrong with it, he!! that is part of why Linux exists- "To each his (or her ) own."

I hope this doesn't get construed wrong, Finger what I mean is if you are going back to winbloze because you like it better, and just aren't feeling that linux is working out any better for you, then by all means, go! But if you are just being a pansy and aren't willing to give it a chance, or even really trying to give it the same amount of chance you did to winbloze, then that's something you might wanna think twice about.

But, if you ever need help when you decide that Linux is the better of the 2 OS's, you always no where to turn. With the problems you have listed, I could sum it up in a thread shorter than this, so don't get too down

Oh, and if you are too embarrased to post questions here, or don't want to for whatever reason, you can always IM some of us, or head over to an IRC channel. My IM on AOL is MasterCLQ, and on yahoo, curvin777, no worries IM me for questions

it's true it's a fact; it might seem like you "config for months and never use". But what you might not be noticing is that you are (hopefully) learning a bit about how the darn thing works, and you are probably coming across many many more opportunities to make it work EXACTLY the way you want it than you might if you were under a windows platform.

i have no problem with a guy who wants to use windows for its ease of installation or configuration or what ever-i know exactly what a pain it is to be drawn deeper and deeper into a configuration quagmire just to get something going that it seems every rube and his brother takes for granted on his winbox-but i must say that you can't beat the sense of satisfaction that comes from working your way to a level of understanding that unveils just what a powerful thing my computer has become with an os which will do things the way i, i repeat i, want them done. more than that, the important thing to me here is that the linux community doesn't need the masses(or at least a significant portion thereof) to validate the os and its users: we need a significant user base to counteract and prevent the never ceasing attempts by microsoft to flat out relieve any and all of us of not only the choice of os but what we may do with our machines regardless of os. for this reason, if no other, it will be good to see linux become available and easily usable to as many game players, movie watchers, mp3 listeners, flash aficionados, etc. as possible, then, when gates et al. try to push through their various monopolistic schemes(often in concert with other greedy mercantilists), there will be a sizable contingent of persons to block such efforts. as it stands now, we may find ourselves and our alternate os activities outlawed, so let's get with building a base of support for open source software in general and new and challenged linux users in particular.

i had just as many problems with windows (at least) as i have with linux, and frankly i know that all the linux problems can be fixed, or at least explained fully. with windows, it's a black box full of 'who-knows?'.

People who want it to 'just work' should get a mac. you might hanker for the days of windows when it 'just worked' but face it, those days did not ever exist. you just expect higher standards from linux than from windows. if windows bluescreens on you (again) you reboot and move on without a thought. what would happen if linux did that? you'd never tolerate it would you?

get a mac and stop whining, is my advice to anybody who claims that anything that doesn't 'just work' is 'just not good enough'.

Was I glitching or it was a dream, while installing RH7.3 there was a package something-rio500, the same was on Mandrake CD, tne same is http://freshmeat.net/projects/rio500/?topic_id=113 if I need it for Slackware, you name it. Anyway I am going back to windows.

I think this comes down to a left-side/right-side of the brain thing IMHO. I saw earlier that def1014 stated that

Quote:

I personally find working with linux is a lot easier than working with UNIX (i.e. AIX, Solaris, etc.). I would even describe linux with the term "user friendly" compared to those OSes.

I personally find Solaris to be the easiest thing in the world to work with.

People that are analytical in nature, that is to say, people who aren't just happy accepting that "It Works", use one side of their brain. On the other hand, there are those who just don't care "how it works", they just wan't it to work. These people use the other half of their brain.

Myself, I tend to be extremely analytical. I want to know how it works. I am not satisfied with windows doing everything for me. I want to be in control. People like me are suited well for Linux.

The problem that Linux faces is that we (the analytical) are not the majority of computer users. The majority want to simply turn on their PC and click on a "Start" button and get everything they want.

Linux has faced up to this problem and has made gigantic strides toward that end. But it is not fully there. We still have a ways to go. And you gotta consider that Linux did it in about 1/4th of the time that it took M$ to get there!

I'd have to at least agree with jdc2048 that Linux has developed to it's current state many times faster than windh00s did. Ofcourse, one has to take into account that at this particular moment in time software-developers have much more know-how on proven concepts with the OS-community; so Linux *should* have evolved faster.

When one looks at free support (so *really* helpful), the conclusion must be that Linux has far more capabilities at this point. The fact that Linux is opensource allows all kinds of people "to get into the guts" of the OS and try to understand it. Thus, you don't need to rely on softwaredevelopers/ITC-Experts/Computer Science-students/whatever to help you when you're stuck... the cash-attendant at the 7/11 will do nicely..
I think that in the longrun this is why Linux will become at least as "big" as windh00s. More people who understand a OS --> more people who can suggest imrovements!

As for now, users can *mostly* be divided in 2 groups:
1. desktop-users
2. gamers

This division seems quite simple so why are we bothering? Well, we can't just forget all the "high-end users" who need specific programs to do their job. I'm not thinking about webdesigners or anything (although come to mention it "Dreamweaver" for Linux would be nice, but I didn't really searched 4 any substitute ), because there's a lot of software out there for them.
But to really make a living out of your work most companies rely on "top" software; the newest Photoshop (the Gimp can't compete with that ..not yet ), the latest version of Auto CAD, the newest CUBASE (music composition), 3DStudio MAX (3D modelling), and the list goes on...

If the companies providing those software-packages would write them for Linux to I think a lot of people would then switch to Linux, because it's a lot stabler and that's what you want when you're working for 3 days on an animation-scene using zigs of RAM and CPU..

For now, I regret I'll have to install XP soon on my pc for the games, BUT I'll keep Linux for everything else. I've been using it for a short while now (2 months I guess) and I can see it's potential and I agree with you guys that it is QUITE satisfactory to fix something and see it work and shine.. :P

Win this - Lin that - Whatever.Way I look at it anybody should use the OS he is happy with.I only got two issues with M$:
The ridiculous pricing - Nothing wrong with paying for software.But they are crazy or very smart depending on the point of view.That's the reason they got all that money in the bank in the first place.
Privacy and security - don't need a bunch of app's that call home constantly and can be managed remotely by a company that has a proven track record of security holes and covering up anything they can.